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CONSTRUCTIVIST ETHICS?LET'S TALK ABOUT THEM:AN INTRODUCTION TO THESPECIAL ISSUE ON ETHICS ANDCONSTRUCTIVIST PSYCHOLOGYTOM STRONG aa Division of Applied Psychology, Faculty of Education,University of Calgary , Calgary, Alberta, CanadaPublished online: 15 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: TOM STRONG (2005) CONSTRUCTIVIST ETHICS? LET'STALK ABOUT THEM: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE ON ETHICS ANDCONSTRUCTIVIST PSYCHOLOGY, Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 18:2, 89-102, DOI:10.1080/10720530590914752

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Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 18:89–102, 2005Copyright Taylor & Francis Inc.ISSN: 1072-0537 print / 1521-0650 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10720530590914752

CONSTRUCTIVIST ETHICS? LET’S TALK ABOUT THEM:AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE ON ETHICS

AND CONSTRUCTIVIST PSYCHOLOGY

TOM STRONG

Division of Applied Psychology, Faculty of Education,University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Constructivist psychology has opened a frontier of new considerations withrespect to ethical practice. This article introduces the special issue on ethicsand constructivist psychology. It provides an overview of key implications ofconstructivist psychology as they relate to considering an ethics of practice.Particular attention is given to two central features of a constructivist ap-proach to practice: that understanding is an interpretive matter, and thatcommunication involves reflexive participation. The article concludes with anoutline of the authors and their contributions to this special issue.

“Shall”, “will”, and “if”, circling in intricate fields of semantic force arounda hidden centre or nucleus of potentiality, are the passwords to hope.(G. Steiner, 2001, p. 7)

For many constructivist psychologists—therapists, researchers, organi-zational development consultants, and educators—ethics takes onsome dimensions not evident to nonconstructivists. If people con-struct, contest, and uphold the understandings and structures(including their moral and ethical codes) by which they live, andthere are no objective universals to point to for these, wheredoes that leave psychologists with respect to an ethics of prac-tice? A constructivist answer to this question dissatisfies many:ethics are humanly created, upheld, or modifiable conventions

Received 3 September 2004; accepted 1 November 2004.Address correspondence to Tom Strong, Assistant Professor, Division of Applied

Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Calgary, 2500 University Way Dr. NW,Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4. E-mail: strongt@ucalgary.ca

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based on the concerns and aspirations of those articulating andliving by them. This special issue affords a reflective opportunityto consider some implications of constructivist psychology as theypertain to an ethics of practice. After some general commentsabout constructivist psychology and ethical practice, I focus hereon the significance of interpretation and reflexivity for this dis-cussion and conclude by providing an overview of the issues ad-dressed in the articles awaiting you. Some of the field’s mostthoughtful contributors have joined in making this issue infor-mative and provocative.

A New Panorama?

If new understandings come from a fusion of conceptual horizons,as Gadamer (1988) suggested, constructivist approaches in psy-chology could perplex many by presenting new and unfamiliarhorizons that have a bearing on ethical practice. For starters,constructivists, including social constructionists, see experience asinterpreted and constructed, not discovered objectively. For adiscipline that espouses a scientist-practitioner stance, practicing a“foundationless” constructivist psychology (Stancombe & White,1998)—one without a realist ontology—can seem like an oxymoronto critics (e.g., Held, 1996). Indeed, how can horizons be fusedwhen people purportedly construct their horizons differently?

Zygmunt Bauman (1993) was concerned that modern ethicswere founded on the unrealizable belief that universal codes couldbe developed to cover every risk or eventuality in human endeav-ors. Applied to psychology, codifying ethical practice has ofteninvolved translating the outcomes of psychological research (its“is’s”) into the “oughts” of professional conduct. As such, ethicalpractice can seem a conservative matter of restricting professionalencounters to only what is known by practitioners (Newman &Holzman, 1997). Recent extensions of this line of thought canbe found in fractious debates about evidence-based practice wheremany advance the view that only manualized and empirically sup-ported interventions should be used as ethical practice (e.g., Dobson,2002; Kazdin & Weisz, 2003). Such codification of practice, whereinterventions can be regarded “algorithmically” (Rush, 2001), runscounter to most constructivist views of practice, where humaninteraction defies being legislated in such an orderly manner.

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Instead, constructivist practice is often premised on notions like“joint action” (Shotter, 1993) where the proceedings are mutu-ally developed in the course of interaction and not prescribed.And, it is this latter line of thought—that practice is negotiatedand somewhat improvised in the course of human interaction—that gets many feeling ethically queasy.

There are many species of constructivism, including socialconstructionism, informing the practices of readers here (Danziger,1997a). A detached psychological science doesn’t fit for manyconstructivists, for whom different understandings and social in-fluences are not to be bracketed off or statistically controlled;these instead are often dialogically factored in to what results inand from therapeutic, research and other professional relation-ships (McNamee & Gergen, 1999; Reason & Bradbury, 2000).This stance alone points to changing horizons worthy of consid-eration. Psychology has a history of accommodating developmentsarising from the interests and concerns of its practitioners, butarguments can be made, pro and con, that the present code ofethics is inclusive of developments in constructivist practice (Strong,in press, 2004). Regardless, constructivist practice merits furtherethical reflection so that psychologists taking it up can play anactive role in framing professional dialogues pertaining to theethical nature of their practices. This special issue aims to informand inspire constructivist practitioners wanting to participate insuch dialogues

A constructivist ethics of practice, by necessity, attends tomeanings and the relationships in which they develop. Heedingnotions like that of Maturana and Varela (1988), that there canbe no “instructive-interactionism” (shorthand for one cannot trans-mit one’s meaning to others), many constructivists orient to therelational realm of meaning and meaning making. To those con-structivists taking up discourse-based views, meaning is a largelylinguistic matter where people step out of relativistic positionsto affirm some interpretations over others (Edwards, Ashmore,& Potter, 1995). And, for some, the matter runs deeper, to theculturally conferred power of psychologists to restrict the mean-ings used to those of their primarily normative ways of practice(marginalizing those outside the norm) (e.g., Parker, 1999). Still,time’s pendulum swings, and perhaps it is time to reflect furtheron what it means to collaborate with clients in “constructing

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preferred realities” (Freedman & Combs, 1996). The hermeneu-tic ground of cultural meaning may otherwise seem tilled andseeded for blow-away “realities” that relational circumstance won’troot. Further, constructivist practice often invites clients and par-ticipants into collaborations that sound dangerously like “dualrelationships.”

There is another dimension, or perhaps implication, to con-structivist practice that is unsettling to many: it can affirm a moraland political stance for psychologists in their work with clients,departing from the detached objectivity normally associated withpsychological practice (Cushman, 1995; Rose, 1990). In this re-spect, psychologists can be seen as promoting client emancipationthrough identifying and contesting the constraints and shortcomingsof dominant cultural and professional discourses (Prilleltensky,1997). The Foucauldian approach of narrative therapy (Madigan,1992), feminist practices of making the personal political (Enns,1997), the Marxist dialectic of change promoted in social therapy(Newman & Holzman, 1997), the emancipatory efforts of criticaldiscourse analysts (Fairclough, 1989), and the praxes of partici-patory action research (Fals-Borda, 1998) are all cases in point.As for therapy itself, some suggest it need not rely on hierarchicalnotions of power when it comes to meanings and actions con-structed with clients (Strong, 2002; Weingarten, 1991). The con-structivist psychologist’s conversations for and with the clientshave taken on clearly different dimensions than those wheredetached objectivity has been the avowed professional standard.

In short, constructivist practice can be seen, to at leastnonconstructivists, as challenging some foundational assumptionsabout appropriate conduct by psychology’s professionals. In thisspecial issue, we will examine some of those assumptions in dif-ferent aspects of practice and in the regulation and developmentof psychology as a profession. I next turn to two features of con-structivist psychology central to our ethical considerations: psy-chology as interpretive and reflexive practice.

Interpretive Practice

the meaning of words is not ordained by some pre-existing agreementon correspondences between words and objects. Instead, it remains tobe actively and constructively made out. (Heritage, 1984, p. 310)

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In taking up a constructivist approach to psychological practice,one is immediately confronted with how people reconcile theirconstructions of experience with each other. After all, one canpoint to the unique ways people in cultures using other languagesconstruct experience and can contrast translations of these con-structions with our own. But this doesn’t explain a more chal-lenging extension of this line of thought: that those sharing alanguage still put their experiences together in different ways aswell. In articulating his personal construct psychology, Kelly (1955)joined a growing group of philosophers and sociologists who sawobjectively or correctly knowable reality as a scientific ideal be-yond human construction. Instead, constructivists see individualsputting together their experience in somewhat unique ways be-cause of the mediating processes and resources (mostly linguisticand symbolic) required. The end result, if one extends the logic,is that people interpret experience in ways somewhat unique totheir experience and positions in social and physical reality.

Those positing a social constructionist position take things astep further: the means by which one interprets experience arisein communicative interaction between people (Vygotsky, 1962).Human interpretations are largely linguistic in nature, and na-ture did not name what humans interpret. This insight is criticalto what many have called the “linguistic turn.” Our primary psy-chological constructs are no different. To consider them as dis-covered overlooks the critical role that language and the conven-tions of prior psychological discourse played in their articulation(Danziger, 1997b). The key point is that peoples’ means of inter-preting, for social constructionists, are seen to develop primarilyin conversation, and they are sustained or altered there as well.Thus, a constructivist psychology informed by social construc-tionism proposes a radically different notion of ontology (ourunderstanding of reality) than the objectively discoverable orverifiable one considered foundational to psychology’s scientist-practitioner.

In starting from a plural view of ontology, constructivistscan run headlong into some assumptions or limitations of psychol-ogy’s knowledge base, particularly when these are seen as war-ranting particular practices. Consider, for example, the notion ofcognitive errors and distortions central to assessment and inter-ventions in many approaches to therapeutic practice. While training

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in diversity issues, and cultural adaptations of assessment instru-ments and therapeutic interventions, have helped psychologistsbetter attune their practices to different culturally-derived on-tologies, constructivists see this issue played out at a more localand individual level that also needs attention. Through constructivisteyes and ears, interpretation is a somewhat idiosyncratic and contextualmatter, and failing to attend to it in such a manner poses ethicalconsiderations: (1) that the conversations of psychological prac-tice can be held to the discourse and familiar understandings ofthe psychologist irrespective of those used by clients or researchparticipants; and (2) that psychologists, through a normative ap-proach to practice, actually practice a form of cultural ideology(Kogan, 1998; Parker, 1999; Rose, 1990).

Seeing psychological communications and practice as ines-capably “politicized” offends many who claim practice can occurin objective and neutral ways. But if the interpreted understand-ings of clients, students, colleagues, and research participants arenot to be presumptively mapped onto those of the psychologist(i.e., as if we all operated from the same map) or treated asproblematic if they don’t map “correctly,” then the use of lan-guage in interactions between them takes on some extra ethicalnuances. Years ago, Korzybski (1941) suggested that we shouldn’tbe confusing maps with the territories they purportedly repre-sented. For our ethical considerations here, such maps, constructs,linguistic differences, and so on, pose translation and coordina-tion issues unimagined (or perhaps not tolerated) by noncon-structivists.

Constructivists, for taking up an interpretive stance, are sen-sitive to how differences in meaning are reconciled. For them,professional communications can be places where meanings areignored, imposed, altered unacceptably, or smoothed over in waysthat privilege the professional’s meaning over others (Weingarten,1991). Conversation, in this sense, is where meaning is negoti-ated in ways that hopefully suit the parties involved (Anderson,1997). This can seem like an onerous challenge; yet to the construc-tivist, failure to coordinate or negotiate meanings can leave thepractitioner like the mythical unclothed emperor, someone whogoes forward believing she or he has the approval or understand-ing of others when such is not the case. In everyday talk, HaroldGarfinkel (cited in Heritage, 1984) felt that people did a good

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job in holding each other to understandable and acceptable terms,but this does not always transfer to professional contexts wheretalk is often translated to the practitioner’s discourse.

Some writers have taken up these issues under the rubric ofnarrative ethics (Josselson, 1996, Newton, 1997) or even “poethics”(Eskin, 2000), to highlight the constructive and negotiated under-standings required for shared meaning. In such an approach tounderstanding and developing shared meaning the emphasis ison developing inclusive language acceptable to the parties in-volved. This, of course, can raise a number of ethical red flagsfor it speaks to notions of intersubjectivity where some measureof objectivity is often sought from psychologists. (See the Ameri-can Psychological Association ethics code, 2002, Standard 3.05:“A psychologist refrains from entering into a multiple relation-ship if the multiple relationship could reasonably be expected toimpair the psychologist’s objectivity.”) Here is where some con-structivists see in such an “objectivist” stance, an unacknowledgedand marginalizing cultural view tantamount to practicing culturalideologies (Kaye, 1999). For some, the answer is “critical inter-subjectivity” (Martin & Sugarman, 1999) or evaluative processeswhere the criteria and outcomes are codeveloped with all partiesinvolved (Schwandt, 2002). These, of course, imply including clientsand research participants in vetting the official understandingsarising from any professional interaction; private understandings,as most constructivists recognize, will develop regardless. At aminimum, an interpretive view requires constructivist psycholo-gists to acknowledge the differences in meaning brought to andderived from a professional encounter. It is the “derived from”part to which we will now devote greater attention as we examinethe notion of reflexivity.

Reflexive Participation

The inquirer’s relation to this (practice) situation is transactional. Heshapes the situation, but in conversation with it, so that his own modelsand appreciations are also shaped by the situation. The phenomena thathe seeks to understand are partly of his own making; he is in the situa-tion he seeks to understand. (D. Schon, 1983, pp. 150–151)

For Donald Schon it was important to distinguish between scien-tific knowledge and knowledge-in-action. The latter view of knowledge

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is reflected in his quote above and speaks to a social dynamismthat cannot be premapped, nor can it absent the professional’sinfluence within that dynamism. Like interpretation, reflexive par-ticipation points to some important considerations with respectto professional ethics. Reflexive participation is another way ofsaying that the constructs others and we bring to social interac-tions, like therapy or research, don’t stay static. They shape andare shaped by how the constructs are operationalized, used andchangeable within such interactions. Dialogues are, by definition,reciprocally influential, something jarringly evident should weconvey the obverse: that professional interactions are monologic.Yet, it has been concerns about perceived, or potential, monologicpractice that have been central to constructivist critics (e.g., Parker,1999; Rose, 1990).

Practicing reflexively requires some element of social impro-visation. Humans, after all, are different from the subjects of thenatural sciences or their technological applications—they are aliveand responsive in how they interpret their experience. Ethnometh-odological studies of survey research (Maynard & Cates Schaefer,2000), for example, show the conduct of such research as highlyperson- and situation-specific, while the outcomes were collabora-tively produced (i.e., between researchers and respondents). Widen-ing the lens somewhat, scientific research itself, when examinedas a social process, shows scientists highly involved in social pro-cesses such as “peer review” and intradisciplinary debates thatshape the outcomes known as scientific knowledge (Potter, 1996).Turning to science’s history, Kuhn’s (1970) research shows thatdevelopments in science have been influenced by its constructsand paradigms over time. Psychological ethics are still largelypremised on idealized notions imported from natural sciencealthough a century has passed since the Einsteinian shift beganthere.

Reflexive practice need not mean “anything goes” practice.The present APA code of Ethics is clear on something that wouldnot stir controversy here: that psychologists do no harm, andthey maximize client and societal benefit. Also informing psy-chologists’ interactions are client preferences and circumstances,their own preferences and professional circumstances (includingworkplace policies), and developments within such interactionsthat are beyond anticipation. Reflexive practice goes one step

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further, however, in an aspect of constructivist practice familiarto many: that interactions with clients, students, and researchparticipants are “construction zones” where collaborative contri-butions are made to the processes and outcomes (Strong, in press).One may practice in ways that lead to unanticipated processesand outcomes.

At its heart, reflexive participation is a notion that impliespractitioners more directly connect process and outcome in theirprofessional interactions. Intervention is a word that typically re-fers to discrete procedures, like therapeutic strategies or researchparticipation protocols and many psychologists treat it as if itwere different from other aspects of their professional interac-tions. Social constructionists, however, see intervention as centralto what we have been calling reflexive practice, in interactions asmicroscopic as one’s turn-taking in the conversational process(Strong, 2002), attention and responses to particular “striking”words (Katz & Shotter, 1999) or in questions one might ask (Tomm,1988). Highlighted in this amplified sense of “intervention” is amicromanagerial ethos, a focus on immediate and microdynamicaspects of interaction often considered mundane. The emphasishere is performative, on how psychologists interact with others inconsequential ways that generally go unnoticed.

Constructivist psychologists can bring added sensitivity to pro-fessional interactions by attending to their reflexive contributionsto those interactions. In some respects, professional training canlead to psychologists “dis-attending” to the nuances of these in-teractions as they monitor developments within them that theirtheories and intervention models make evident and familiar (Shotter,1999). I recognize that these comments might rankle a few readerswho may see in them caricatures of insensitive and oblivious psy-chologists conversationally “stepping on the toes” of clients andresearch participants. The ethical point I am raising refers tofeatures of talk that have seemed too mundane to merit atten-tion, particularly when the dominant metaphor for communica-tion has been that of communication as a conduit for information(Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), not as a locus of constructive socialinteraction itself.

Bringing the interpretive and reflexive aspects of social inter-action together, I have focused on two elements of communicationthat a realist ontology and a conduit metaphor for communication

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obscure. It seems an oversight to me that psychology focuses solittle attention on the centrality of communicative interaction orconversation in its endeavors, particularly when such interactioncan be constructive. Ethically, interpretation and reflexivity pointto considerations about how we attend to the meanings of othersand ourselves play out in professional interaction. The presump-tion that humans operate from the same ontology that languagecan accurately represent, obviates a need to coordinate such mean-ings and interactions in more sensitive person-specific ways. Vari-ations on this theme will seem familiar in how psychology hasattended to multicultural issues where clearly one cannot developgeneralizations about people that hold across difference profes-sional encounters (Pedersen, 1999). If ethics are as much abouta profession’s aspirations as they are about its regulations thenwe stand to benefit from further considering how we profession-ally engage with the kinds of differences a constructivist approachmakes evident in any encounter (e.g., Kogler, 1996). I welcomethe discussions to come from this issue and continuing ethicaldevelopments within psychology.

Contributors to the Special Issue

I am very grateful to introduce a line-up that a colleague re-ferred to as “stellar.” When given the opportunity to guest editthe special issue, I was also given the go-ahead to recruit authors,an opportunity, for me, not unlike the 10-minute shopping spreessometimes awarded as contest prizes. The contributors to thisspecial issue have all made substantial contributions to develop-ments in constructivist psychology and/or professional ethics.

Immediately following this article, John Shotter focuses atten-tion on the relational microdynamics of psychological practice.There is something very real that develops in such relationshipsas people develop ways to describe and evaluate experience to-gether, he writes. An author well known for his contributions tosocial constructionist theory (e.g., Conversational realities. Shotter,1993), Shotter contends that in relationships we develop respon-sive ways of being with each other, a “we-ness” that helps us de-velop a better sense not of underlying reality, but of the “inlyingrealities” particular to our relationships. Drawing from thinkersas diverse as Wittgenstein, Bakhtin, Merleau-Ponty, and Goffman,

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he brings readers to a view of “objectivity” that is inherently so-cial and developed from the obligations, respect, and commit-ments we make within our relationships. John Shotter recentlyretired from academic life and remains active in writing aboutissues pertaining to social constructionist theory and practice.

Svend Brinkman and Steinar Kvale of the University of Aarhusin Denmark, ask readers to “confront the ethics of qualitativeresearch” and become wary of “ethicism” that portrays qualitativeresearch as inherently ethical. For Brinkman and Kvale the chal-lenge is to see qualitative interviews as involving asymmetric andinstrumental relationships that are not in themselves emancipatory.Indeed, they write of an interview culture where there are macro-as well microethics involved in conducting and reporting research.But, they ask us to think of qualitative research as ways of de-scribing experience rather than constructing it, for how researchersand participants can more faithfully render what results fromtheir shared efforts. Many readers will be familiar with Kvale’swriting on qualitative research and postmodern psychology, par-ticularly InterViews (Kvale, 1996). Brinkman is completing his Ph.D.with Kvale’s supervisory assistance.

Christy Bryceland and Hank Stam, of the University of Cal-gary, next turn the focus inward, on the ethical regulation ofpsychological practice. In particular, they examine the Empiri-cally Supported Treatment initiative of the American Psychologi-cal Association for how it aims to restrict therapeutic practice tointerventions supported by medically-oriented research. They askreaders to reflect on such developments for how ethical practicemay become aligned with these developments as a scientific basisfor psychological practice for regulating professional conduct.Stam is editor of the influential journal, Theory and Psychology,and is supervising Bryceland in her doctoral studies.

Jean Pettifor, Carole Sinclair, and Tom Strong take up thetheme that professional ethics in psychology have developed inconstructive ways in accordance with the concerns of society andpsychologists. Pettifor and Sinclair have been instrumental in devel-oping the initial and subsequent Codes of Ethics for CanadianPsychologists, and join Strong in describing the constructive anddeliberative processes from which these codes were derived. Pettiforand Sinclair also share their current efforts in bringing psycholo-gists together internationally in articulating a global set of ethical

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principles for psychologists. In this respect, they share a groundfloor view of what it means to engage psychologists in the diverseand constructive conversations required in articulating ethicalaspirations. Pettifor and Sinclair remain active in teaching, con-sulting, and clinical practice.

Given the space allotment permissible for this special issue,Alexa Hepburn’s discourse analyses of helping conversations—inthis case child protection helpline conversations—will be includedin a subsequent issue of the Journal of Constructivist Psychology.Retaining a focus on relational microdynamics, her analyses showthe kinds of conversational practices used in emotionally chargedrelational circumstances familiar to psychotherapists, but they doso in ways that invite readers to distinguish many constructiveaspects of professional talk that generally are taken-for-granted.By showing actual transcriptions of these helpline conversationsreaders can see the consequential ways in which professional talkinfluences the course of such conversations, making evident ethicalconsiderations about conversational process and its outcomes.Hepburn is a member of the Discourse and Rhetoric Group atLoughborough University (other members include Jonathan Potter,Derek Edwards, Michael Billig, and Charles Antaki) in the U.K.whose work has been very influential in bringing a construction-ist or discursive perspective to psychology.

Together, these authors bring you views of ethics—microand macro—and thoughts about what it means to consider ethicsin light of constructivist theory and practice. Readers are encour-aged to reflect on the views shared and to consider ways theymay become active in the ethics that shape their practice of psy-chology.

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